Katana the Hokkaido -
Today I got up at 2AM and began driving to Seattle. I ran into some road construction, car crashes, and heavy traffic, of course, making my 6 hour drive into a 7 hour drive. But I got there alright and on time, only to get royally confused as to where at the airport I was supposed to go. The directions I got from various employees were all different, and after driving around for what felt like forever, taking wrong turns almost every second, I finally got to the correct place I was supposed to be. Only to be told to have a seat and wait for another hour as they prepared a stack paperwork for me. That I could take over to customs and be harassed about whither this should be labeled "commercial" (and slapped with a big fee) or not. Finally the customs guy made up his mind and suddenly turned into a nice dude, which confused me again, and sent be back to the cargo pickup with my approved paperwork. (This took another hour.) After that I was sent into a warehouse to pick up my package.
We headed back south and ran into more heavy traffic, road construction, and even more car crashes. (Seriously, I have never seen that many wrecks in rapid succession on I-5 before.)
I eventually reached Portland where I took a detour to meet up with @LoboSpam and go for a hike around this super awesome off-leash area thing (Katana stayed on-leash the entire time). Which I forgot to take pictures of, as usual.
After our fun detour, we got back on the interstate and, you guessed it! More road construction, car crashes, and heavy traffic.
We made several stops to stretch our legs. I can't ever remember being that uncomfortable in my Jeep before, but then again, is has been quite a while since my last road-trip.
We finally got home around 10:30PM. I introduced Katana to the pack of dorks and so far they are all doing good. There has been very minimal snark from the Shiba, and he is incredibly interested in my yard and Baby Beef hide which I had to put on the other side of the fence since he kept trying to eat it.
Thank you so much to @TheWalrus for making this happen!
And blame @Cezeig for suggesting I get a Hokkaido, it's his fault.
We headed back south and ran into more heavy traffic, road construction, and even more car crashes. (Seriously, I have never seen that many wrecks in rapid succession on I-5 before.)
I eventually reached Portland where I took a detour to meet up with @LoboSpam and go for a hike around this super awesome off-leash area thing (Katana stayed on-leash the entire time). Which I forgot to take pictures of, as usual.
After our fun detour, we got back on the interstate and, you guessed it! More road construction, car crashes, and heavy traffic.
We made several stops to stretch our legs. I can't ever remember being that uncomfortable in my Jeep before, but then again, is has been quite a while since my last road-trip.
We finally got home around 10:30PM. I introduced Katana to the pack of dorks and so far they are all doing good. There has been very minimal snark from the Shiba, and he is incredibly interested in my yard and Baby Beef hide which I had to put on the other side of the fence since he kept trying to eat it.
Thank you so much to @TheWalrus for making this happen!
And blame @Cezeig for suggesting I get a Hokkaido, it's his fault.
Comments
I hear you on the road trip legs, it was "fun" driving to Tampa to drop off Tsune, and then to Orlando for the move. Overall it was about 7 hours due to what seemed to be a tropical storm.
That's awesome that you and @LoboSpam met up, and it looks like Katana had enough fun to pass out too. How did he do on the hike? I hope @LoboSpam has some spam to share lol.
Blame accepted, totally worth it
Im looking forward to following along and hearing all about him!!
I found it a little difficult to find where to pick up Meitou because they had moved to a different building. But it wasn't too hard for me to find. I did have a long wait, but I got there early before Meitou's flight had even landed. I'm sorry you didn't have a good time with customs. The guy I had to take my paperwork to was super nice. He had seen me earlier and had seen Meitou in the warehouse and was telling me how healthy and good looking my puppy was. So my experience turned out really well, and I didn't even mind the waiting (in all honesty, I flipped through magazines in the little lobby area and made fun of pictures in them to the family that came with me...I'm so lame, lol).
There are so much boys already... so... Let's go to importing some girls
Katchi is very "mine". All the toys are his, all the food is his. I think he is very worried that the other dogs will take his things. He also tries to steal, and learned that you DO NOT take things from Juneau right off the bat. He hasn't tried to steal from Conker yet, but I have blocked him from going near him when he has something and he does not to avoid causing problems for the time being.
He seems to have a clothing fetish. He stole several socks and some gloves and tried to swallow them whole, so I had to do a deep clean and pick up EVERYTHING and put it all securely away. This was a problem with the sleddogs I worked with, and is a potentially expensive or lethal habit. I will probably have to do a lot of "drop it!" and "leave it!" training with him.
Katana screams and howls while in a crate at first, but quiets down when it's time to sleep. I was expecting this, so it's not surprising that he's noisy in a crate.
Congrats Pam!!! I love him already
@Losech Meitou loves to steal socks, too! And gloves sometimes, but gloves are usually stowed away while family tend to be a little lazy about where they leave their socks. When I first got him he loved to steal towels more than anything. I realized recently he doesn't do that anymore so the dish towels can finally go back to hanging on the oven. Occasionally he would snitch other things, like slippers. But within the last few weeks he has become a sock snatching fiend. I have to make sure all other doors are closed and then grab something yummy to trade with.
Katana with the "world" ball. I really like these toys, made by Planet Dog. A bit on the spendy side but I think they are worth it!
And here he is with a Kong Wubba. I don't really know when I acquired that toy, but Katana really likes it. This is the softest toy I have since Juneau destroyed all of Conker's stuffed toys. I guess it's a good thing 'cause Katana would do the same.
I have a couple crates sitting around, this one is outside and used as a storage shelf. But Katana seems to think it is a good place to take a nap.
I need to make a notable mention to Conker. On the hike he spotted a turkey and glanced at me for a moment, then I told him to "Go git 'em!" so he took off after the turkey up a steep hill. It made some strange bubbling sound as it ran away from him, but he nearly caught it, so it took flight and rested in a tree where Conker couldn't get it. Much to my surprise, Conker bayed up the turkey! This has been his issue with squirrels, so when he began to bark at that turkey I shouted lots of praise and support until he decided to come back on his own.
Katana watched with interest, and joined Conker on a squirrel hunt, but it out-maneuvered them and went up into a tree without either noticing. So I did not get to see if Conker or Katana would bay up the squirrel.
Maybe next time!